3d printing

You gotta hand it to them.

Ariah is a 6-year-old who was born without most of her right hand. When the robotics program in Deer Creek Intermediate School in St. Francis, Wisconsin learned about this, they decided that they would do something to help her out.

Presenting Pedro the Petite Pony's Periscope!

If you find yourself mourning Lil' Sebastian on a regular basis, you'll be happy to read this story of a Shetland Pony finding happiness. This is Pedro, who couldn't see out of his stall because of his small stature. But the Ebony Horse Club got him his very own 3D-printed Pedroscope to help him feel better about life on the farm. Hooray!

To quote Victoria McNally, "That is literally a Drunk Uncle joke."

Instructables member 3DigitalCooks uses icing colors and a Pinya2 (a 3d printer designed to work with liquids) to craft mazes, teeny-tiny buildings and beautiful, Lisa Frank-esque designs out of hummus. Why? I don't know, dude, why is the sky blue? Why do we wake up every morning? What if God was one of us? Accept that we can probably build a city out of hummus in 2015 but we don't have flying cars yet and move on with your life.

Using mechanics based on everyone's favorite cephalopods (no, not cuttlefish, you weirdo), scientists from the University of Southampton, MIT, and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology have developed what I am now dubbing the Hella Fast OctoBot, because why the heck not.

Oh God, please don't beam me up, Scotty.

In case all of the recent talk about artificial intelligence wasn't enough of a technologically-driven existential crisis for you, we now have a 3D printer that will "teleport" objects by beaming their specifications to another printer and then destroying the original object. But why destroy the original? Well we don't want any Thomas Rikers running around, do we?

*Sniff* What? There's just something in my eye, OK?

Prosthetic limbs are usually too expensive to be practical for most children (one in 1,500) born with partially formed arms. 3D printing has the capacity to not only lower the cost significantly and put prosthetics in reach for people in need, but also raise kids' spirits with some really personalized designs like this stormtrooper arm from the 501st legion.

A happy ending!

In another example of the autonomy 3D-printing can give people over their health, MakeZine is reporting that Pamela Shauvan Scott and her husband Michael Balzer used their maker expertise to get a crucial second medical opinion.